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Dessert

Plain Macaroni Pudding

A sweet baked macaroni dish made with butter, milk, eggs, sugar, lemon peel, cinnamon, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,950 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plain Macaroni Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Cook the macaroni

  1. Boil the macaroni in salted water for about 20 minutes until tender.

  2. Drain the water and add the butter and salt to the macaroni.

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk and mix it with the beaten eggs, sugar, lemon peel, and cinnamon.

  2. Combine the milk mixture with the macaroni.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a buttered pudding dish, cover, and bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes, then uncover to brown.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + cinnamontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Macaroni
Forms the bulk and body of the pudding, holding the custard in place as it sets.
Eggs
Set the milk mixture into a tender, sliceable custard that binds the pasta.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, keeping the pudding moist as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the pasta a softer, more luxurious texture.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps it brown lightly on top in the oven.

The step that matters

Uncover to brown after the covered bake. Baking covered first lets the eggs set gently without drying out. Uncovering then allows surface browning, which needs dry heat, so the top colours without overcooking the custard below.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, milk, sugar, egg, cinnamon):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Raisinfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, milk, sugar, egg, cinnamon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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